


Tabula Rasa

by MyHusbyLooksLikeJoel (Jackswife)



Category: The Last of Us
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-01
Updated: 2017-06-23
Packaged: 2018-08-28 11:44:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 13
Words: 19,121
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8444527
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jackswife/pseuds/MyHusbyLooksLikeJoel
Summary: Ellie and Joel find themselves in an unfamiliar place with no memory of how they got there. They will have to work together to cross unfamiliar terrain, conquer unexpected enemies and reach safety.





	1. Chapter One

**Author's Note:**

> Unlike my usual works I haven't finished this yet. I usually start posting when I am polishing the second half, or when I am finished when I post a one shot. This one I am not sure whether I will completely finish because I still have many others on the back burner. If you'd like more of this one please do leave a comment, and I will post again. I expect that within a few chapters the rating will rise, in keeping with my other works, those two won't be able to keep their hands off each other eventually.

He woke up. His eyes opened slowly and he started to adjust to the day. As he became more alert, he realised two things. First that he had no idea where he was; and second that he didn’t know how he got here. He eased his body out of the bed, moving as quietly as possible so as not to alert anyone outside the room.

When he stood on the rug in the middle of the bedroom floor, he began to take stock. He was naked, save for a golden ring on his left ring finger, which was strange because he couldn’t remember getting married. Couldn’t remember a lot of things, it seemed. A search turned up some clothes that looked like they might fit, might be his. Screwed up and thrown about the room, he figured whatever had happened last night must have been a lot of fun. Shame he couldn’t remember it.

He dressed, checked his pockets for an idea of who he was and when he came up empty searched the cupboards along the opposite wall to the bed as well. He found two backpacks, two pistols, a rifle and a shotgun. The shotgun was loaded so he took it from the shelf to go and search the rest of the building. He didn’t think he could be a prisoner, since prisoners weren’t usually allowed guns, but he took it with him, in case he ended up needing it. He swept his eyes over the rest of the room for anything he might immediately need. There was a broken watch on one of the nightstands. He examined it briefly, but after raising it to his ear and confirming it had no tick, he put it back. He turned and left to explore further.

The house was dilapidated and he crept through it cautiously. Being quiet and careful would help to avoid attracting unwanted attention and would help prevent the collapse of the building onto him. Neither were popular prospects with him. He checked his corners automatically and swept the shotgun from side to side, leaving him wondering why he knew how to do this but couldn’t remember anything about himself. As he reached the end of the hallway, the carpet mouldering beneath his feet, he heard someone tunelessly singing guitar riffs. He stood tightly against the wall, trying to use the mirror he could see to spot the person in the room without being seen himself. He shifted slightly holding the shotgun ready to make sure that he would survive the contact with this potential enemy. He shuffled his left foot forward, following it with his right, as if he’d been trained by law enforcement. He wasn’t sure what he had been expecting, but a fresh faced twenty something woman with red hair and wide green eyes, open with shock wasn’t it.

“Who the fuck are you mister?” she said, in an aggressive tone that paid no mind whatsoever to the shotgun he was holding. He was impressed and lowered the weapon but didn’t put it down.

“What in the hell do you mean? You got me prisoner here and you want to know who I am?”

“Me hold you prisoner?” she asked, clearly finding it preposterous. “Pull the other one mate, it’s got fucking bells on.”

“Well explain it to me then, what am I doin’ here?”

“Hey, I know as much as you do, buddy,” she said, clearly getting frustrated.

“What’s your name?” he asked, softer, trying a different tack.

“What’s yours?” she bounced back at him.

“Uh, at the minute I ain’t exactly sure,” he replied tentatively, hoping she could help to fill things in for him. If he had a hand free he’d be rubbing at the back of his neck.

“You too?” she said, with a look of shock on her face.

“Ok, now let’s try not to panic, shall we? First off we need to work out whether we are prisoners,” the guy thought aloud. “Reckon we can do that pretty easily,” he said as he opened the front door to the building. It creaked open and then lightly bumped against the wall. The view of trees outside gave them not much more than they had before but he could see an outbuilding across a yard and thought that it would give them somewhere else to look.

“Probably not prisoners then,” he said. “You hungry?” he asked, realising he didn’t need to remember when he last ate to know it was too long ago.

“Uh, sure, yeah, I could eat,” she replied, haltingly, less sure of herself now that the bear of a man was less grumpy.

Between them they rustled up some bread and some cold, sliced meat, and a hot cup of herb tea. He sat down next to her on the couch and started thinking aloud again to strategize.

“Alright, aside from who we are which I’m hopin’ we can figure out by goin’ through those packs in the closet, do you have any idea where we are or how we got here? How we know each other?” he looked at her with an eagerness born from hoping she might be able to answer his questions.

His face fell a little when she shook her head. She felt bad at omitting how, exactly, she had woken up that morning. She’d felt comforted by the presence of the guy she didn’t know wrapped around her when she woke up, and even when he had pointed the gun at her she felt safe. Truth be told, she didn’t want to explain waking up surrounded by the huge, pleasant feeling but unknown and alarmingly naked body of the man sitting next to her. She had grabbed her clothes and run for it.

The guy had been observing her closely. When she wiped a hand over her face, he grabbed her wrist.

“What’s this?” he asked, insistently.

“My hand you fucking dope, let the fuck go of me!”

He dropped her wrist, but then showed her his own left hand, pointing at the ring on his finger.

“Look, we match, alright?”

She looked from her hand to his and then watched as he stripped the golden jewellery from his finger.

“Oh, breaking up with me just because you can’t remember who I am, huh?” she joked, sarcastically.

He looked hurt.

“I’m checkin’ for an inscription. Might be somethin’ to help us figure out who we are.”

She shuffled closer trying to see for herself. He swatted at her and pushed her back out of the light.

“Well? You see anything?”

“Just hold your horses for a second,” he grumbled. “No, nothin’, sorry.”

“Oh,” she said sadly, with a dejected slump of her shoulders. He bumped his own shoulder into hers to cheer her up. “So, uh, what’s an inscription?”

“Huh?” he asked, seeming genuinely puzzled.

“The thing you were looking for. What is it?”

“Oh. Uh, some people get somethin’ engraved on the inside of the ring. You know, their names, or the date of the wedding or whatever.”

He stood up and held out his hand.

“C’mon, there has to be somethin’ else here somewhere that tells us more ‘bout who we are.”

She sighed, and let him pull her up. Both of them revelled in the other’s touch.

“Where d’you wanna start?” she asked.

“Well, I saw a couple of packs in the closet I got the gun from. I figure there has to be somethin’ in there.”

The two of them walked back into the bedroom together. When his eyes swept over the bed and the tables he remembered the watch. He walked across and picked it up, turning to the reverse side with a quick flick of his wrist. He noticed the pale stripe that suggested whether the watch was broken or not he still wore it.  

“Hey, there’s writin’ here,” he called to the girl.

“What’s it say,” she asked, crowding in close to him.

“Happy Birthday Daddy, love Sarah,” he read before looking up. “You don’t think that…” he said, leaving the question hanging.

“No!” she said firmly, not letting him finish.

“How can you be so damn certain?” he asked, with a now familiar note of grumpiness in his voice.

She paused, contemplating how she had woken wearing a handsome naked man like a damn jetpack. As far as she could tell they were husband and wife, not father and daughter, and there wasn’t a lot to contradict that. There can’t be many fathers and daughters who wear matching rings, and share a bed like they did and she wasn’t sure if she wanted to know the truth if that was the case.

“The rings, dude. Like you said, they match. We can’t be father and daughter. I don’t know who Sarah is, but I don’t think she’s me.”

He wasn’t totally convinced about her reaction. It felt a little disproportionate. He was also starting to think that he must have had sex last night. Though it might not have been with her, if it was then it would make his father daughter theory unlikely. He looked back at her, realising that he had paused long enough to make her feel awkward.

“Ok. Let’s take a look around. How about you take that nightstand and I’ll do this one?” he said, pointing her at the stand opposite the one he had found the watch on.

Opening his, he found a revolver, two boxes of different types of bullets, a book, a pocket knife and a block of wood that was partly carved into the shape of a horse. He ran his fingers over the wood, feeling the curves and the grain and knew in his bones that he could finish this piece of work. After replacing it he grabbed the book and seated himself on the bed to flick through its pages. It was a book of love poetry, some of which was enough to make him blush in the presence of this young lady.

He stole a glance at her hair, her face in profile. He was finding so much to admire about her character and the more he looked at her face, the more he thought she was familiar. He flipped to the frontispiece, not expecting to find anything, but by now checking it automatically.

“Oh, I got something,” he said excitedly.

She looked up and he read directly from the book.

“For Joel, on your honeymoon. Romance the poor girl every now and then, love Tommy and Maria.”

“That would make you Joel, right? Guess we can call me Poor Girl for now, it’s got kind of a ring to it,” she quipped.

Joel smiled and looked in the bottom drawer. Finding it empty he turned and asked if she wanted any help. She had searched through the top drawer and found the typical items like he, like Joel, had. Book, notepad and pencil, water bottle, but nothing that could identify her.

She opened the bottom drawer and took one look inside. She yelped in shock and slammed it closed again. Joel looked up from where he had been casually leafing through the collection of Deadpool comic books she had liberated.

“Everythin’ ok?” he asked, concerned.


	2. Chapter Two

She made an odd squealing noise that made him hurry to see what the problem was. She had gone crimson, the blush rising from her chest and neck and leaving him briefly wondering how far down it went. She stepped out of his way and he slid the bottom drawer open. Joel glanced at the girl again, trying to read the expression on her face before dropping his head to look in the drawer.

Instantly he knew what had made her blush. There was a large box of condoms, a blindfold and several silk scarves in a variety of colours. Nestled against the silk was a bottle of lubricant and a thick glass buttplug. It was swirled blue and green and kind of pretty. He smirked. Joel just couldn’t help himself. The image of using the collected items on her body made his dick twitch. He was beginning to realise that this arousal could be something he was remembering. It was certainly more intense than he would have thought for someone he’d never thought about that way before. Perhaps this was another way to confirm their relationship, even if he didn’t feel like sharing it with her.

“Oh-kay,” he said. “Maybe let’s move on?”

He opened the cupboard and pulled out both packs, handing her the blue one with the monster charm and keeping the battered one held together with duct tape for himself. It looked how he had felt this morning. He smiled when he took a surreptitious look at her and saw she was apparently struck by the charm. Joel turned to his own pack, opening one of the smaller sections and pulling out a gallon sized Ziploc bag. Inside were several pieces of paper. As he tipped them out, he caught hold of the photograph first. It showed a far less care-worn version of him than the reflected one he had caught in the mirror on his way stalking the girl this morning. Also in the picture was a young girl, a blonde girl. Clearly not the red head in front of him.

“Wonder if she might be Sarah,” he murmured under his breath.

Joel laid the picture aside reverentially, and searched the other papers. He found a small, card covered booklet, with Boston Quarantine Zone on the cover. Inside there was his name and his picture, from within the last few years.

“Look at this,” he said, with a touch of excitement in his voice as he held out the book to her. “Says I’m Joel Miller and I’m from Boston.”

“Joel, I got news for you. There’s no fucking way you are from Boston. All this tells you, Tex, is that on the date of issue, see here,” she said, pointing, “You were in living there.”

“Tex?” he asked, shook his head, “whatever. Do you have one of these?”

The girl ummed and sifted through clothing, a couple of books and what looked like a porn magazine before she found a smaller card the same size and shape as a credit card. It had a photo of a younger version of her, from maybe five years ago.

“Yes! Boosh!” she yelled, pumping her fists in the air as she raised her knees in an odd version of a victory dance.

Joel kept the thought that she must never have seen a victory dance before to himself. He was pleased with his restrain as he didn’t ask if she’d only ever read about them before.

“Look, I have a name. Ellie Williams, Cadet. Boston Military Preparatory School,” she said with a smile so wide it threatened to crack her cheeks. Her good mood was infectious.

“Well, it is mighty fine to meet you Miss Williams,” Joel drawled.

It made her giggle and blush, trying to hide the arousal that had spiked through her at the sound of his voice.

“Why sir, I do declare. You must call me Ellie,” she said in a facsimile of his accent that made him wince and then chuckle. “Anyway,” she continued in her normal voice. “You and I are married. Wouldn’t that make me Ellie Miller?”

“I guess. Now we have names. Have you remembered anythin’ that might help us figure out where we are or where to go from here?”

A search of their packs turned up a couple of changes of clothing each, a map of Teton County, Wyoming with a route drawn from Jackson down to a tiny speck in the mountains that had to be where they were, and a penny embossed with the words “Snow King Mountain Resort”. Beside those things, they had a number of weapons, knives and survival gear. It looked like they had prepared for the end of days.

“OK, looks like we might be here,” she said pointing at the speck on the map. “And we must’ve come from this place, Jackson. That ringing any bells for you?”

“Nope but I agree. Think our best plan is to head over there and hope that there’s anyone there who knows who we are.”

“And then what?” she asked, looking at him slightly sideways.

“What do you mean?”

“Well, what if you never remember me and I never remember you?”

“I don’t think it will come to that. I’m already remembering some things,” he came to a halt, and felt a little embarrassed. “I remember feelin’ things. About you. I think with time we’ll be able to go back the way we were.”

She came closer, wrapping her arms awkwardly round his torso and holding onto him.

“I hope so Joel, I hope so,” she sighed against his ribs, her body seeking him for comfort even though her thoughts barely knew him.

They rested for a moment, then went on to search the kitchen and put together a meal of chilli, pasta and a plate of peaches from a can for dessert. Ellie sat watching Joel raise his dripping fingers from the table, peach slice captured firmly, before sucking them into his mouth. His tongue searched out every ounce of essence from his skin, cleaning his fingers before he repeated the process. Each time those thick fingers went between his lips and he sucked at them part of her clenched. Suddenly she no longer felt like eating, and she slid the remaining peaches from her plate over to him.

“You want these?”

“You ain’t goin’ to finish them?”

“No, I’m good.”

She watched him gorge himself on the slices and felt a sudden bolt of pleasure at the idea of sucking the taste of sweet fruit from his mouth, his lips, his tongue, his skin. It was so intense and visceral it felt like something she had experienced before. The intrusion of this fantasy left her swollen and sticky, and uncomfortable over the fact that the search of the building earlier hadn’t turned up another place to sleep. They’d have to bed down together. She was going to have to suffer through the night and if the night before was any indicator he liked to cuddle.

“Hey, while I remember, did you find a phone at all?”

“A what?” Ellie asked with a quizzical look on her face.

“A mobile phone. You know, talks to far-away people, lets you summon help. Thought we could call for a doctor or somethin’.”

Ellie stared at him like he had three heads.

“I have no clue what you’re talking about. I didn’t find anything where it didn’t know what it was either so I guess that you’re shit outta luck.”

“Uh, Ok,” Joel said, wondering what kind of person didn’t know what a phone was.

He shook his head and went to the bathroom to get himself ready for bed. He debated jerking off to stop himself waking up rubbing himself against Ellie. He knew how he sought out warm bodies he shared a bed with. He knew he was known for it since he was a boy and shared a bed on occasion with a brother he could remember no other facts about.

*****

Joel woke up in the early hours of the morning. A look at the uncovered window of the bedroom showed a sky only just beginning to lighten with the sun. He was hot, and something pressed against his chest was moving slowly across him. When it brushed his cock he realised why he had woken up. His erection had decided it was time for him to come alive and join the party. He had a hand on a soft, feminine hip and was about to push back when the day before hit him. The wife he couldn’t remember had to be the woman grinding on him at the moment. Surely touching her like this was immoral? When she moaned his name in her sleep he knew he had to get out of there before he wound up feeling like he had taken advantage.

He dragged himself to the edge of the bed and was just walking round past her when she made a noise between a yelp and a groan. He turned to check she was ok, and two things became readily apparent from the look on her face. She was fine, better than fine in fact if the post orgasmic expression was a clue. And she was waking. He rushed away as her eyelids fluttered before he was found standing over her with an erection pressing out the front of his boxers.

Before she came completely awake he had left the room and went to lie on the short, uncomfortable couch in the living area. As he rested, his body forced him to recollect that noise and he realised that sleep wasn’t going to come unless he took care of his dick first. As he started to sort through the images that had occurred to him earlier, he realised there were more of them. He couldn’t tell which were new and which were old but he liked all of them. Mindlessly he ran a hand over the bulge in his shorts, appreciating the sensation. Maybe if he was having returning memories, she was too. Joel wondered if that was what the dream had been, then slid his hand beneath his waistband and encircled his dick with his fist. He’d barely taken one full tug before he heard the creak of the door opening.

“Joel?” asked Ellie with a rusty sounding voice.

“Fuck,” he snarled. He took a deep breath and tried again. “Yeah, what’s up?”

When she pushed the door wider he grabbed at the blanket on the back of the sofa, but refused to let go of his cock until he realised it looked totally obvious what he was doing.

“I woke up when you closed the door to the bedroom. When you didn’t come back. I worried that you might be leaving me here.”

She had started hesitantly, but by the end her indignation was showing. Joel tucked his dick back away and hoped she didn’t realise that was what he was doing. He wasn’t sure how to approach this situation but he knew he couldn’t go back to bed right now like this.

“Look Ellie I promise I’m not goin’ anywhere without you. I just need some time to myself right now.”

Ellie scoffed and stormed from the room with a deep and intense anger. Joel turned his head into the couch cushion and groaned in frustration. At least his erection had gone.

By the time he had finally regained some dignity the sun was high in the sky and he knew they couldn’t set out to look for Jackson until the next morning at the earliest. He couldn’t look Ellie in the eyes, in part over her response to sleeping next to him and his own to seeing her, and partly because she was clearly still pissed at him for leaving her in the middle of the night and freaking her out. Like the big brave man that he thought he was he spent the morning avoiding her.

He’d gone into the stables thinking it was an outbuilding that might house a car or other vehicle that they could use to get away from here. He found two pissed off horses he hadn’t expected. Apparently they hadn’t driven up here, even though he was fairly sure he didn’t know how to ride a horse. The animals seemed to recognise him. Both came straight to him when he walked to the front of their stalls. After staring at them open mouthed for a while, he started to hunt through the cached supplies in the third and fourth stalls. There had to be something that he could feed them, right? That maybe came in a sack with “Horse Food” printed on it and with instructions on how to feed them. While he searched he found an old fashioned pump tap and bucket. He poured water into the troughs in the stalls and carried on looking. Did horses need to get walked? He didn’t like this feeling of not knowing anything.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> More of this one as requested. It has slightly taken over my life at the moment, but in a good way. Hopefully you're getting as much out of it as I am.


	3. Chapter Three

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Joel finds something interesting.

“I found somethin’ I think you should see,” Joel said, walking back into the house after his search of the stables and the attached storeroom.

Ellie shied away from him and refused to make eye contact. Well, he couldn’t blame her. They might be married and his dick was adamant it remembered but the situation the night before had been awkward for the both of them.

“Look, I get it, it’s awkward. But I think you really need to see this ‘cause right now it don’t make no sense.”

“I don’t know how much help I’ll be,” she whispered, but at least she approached him and was talking to him again.

Joel dumped the gas mask he had found onto the table. It was clearly fairly old, well-worn and frequently maintained. The label on the plate inside the seal read “Property of Joel Miller”, but his name was written over the top of another, scratched out and illegible. He couldn’t figure out any reason he would need a gas mask, or for that matter any reason he would need one and Ellie wouldn’t.

“Is that a gas mask?”

“Yeah. But I can’t think what I would have it for.”

“Maybe you get really bad allergies,” she joked.

Joel cracked a smile which faded from his face when he thought about telling her he hadn’t found her mask.

“Things are starting to look pretty weird. The two of us, out in the middle of nowhere for no real reason we can figure out…”

“Hey, that book said it was for our honeymoon,” she interjected.

“Sure, but honestly, we have no idea when it got given to us. Or even if I maybe kept it because I got a kick out of it bein’ given to someone with the same name as me. I don’t know no Tommy or Maria.”

She considered this for a moment before collapsing into peals of laughter. When she could pause long enough to gasp out an explanation Joel realised why.

“Joel, you can’t remember much of fucking anything!”

She started to laugh again and this time Joel joined in. The two of them howled together, until they couldn’t stand and sat with a pair of ungainly thumps on the ground. When they finally stopped laughing Ellie had her head pillowed on Joel’s stomach and lay at ninety degrees to him. His fingers had found their way into her hair and they sported matching wide happy smiles, and slightly damp eyes. Unlike the awkwardness of last night this felt totally natural.

 “Uh, that notebook of yours; did it have any writin’ in it?” Joel asked, hoping to move on to a safe, non-threatening topic.

“The pages are all blank,” Ellie said disappointment that she couldn’t shed more light on their situation clear in her voice.

“Right, but show me the thing again. I thought someone tore pages from it when I saw it before.”

Ellie got up and retrieved the book. It had a scene of mountains and forests on the front that made her want to go exploring. The idea that she was exploring her own life made her feel better about not being able to remember all of it. When she showed Joel he opened the book and showed her where pages had been torn from the front. He tilted the book looking to see if there was any way to make out what had been written on the pages before they were torn out.

“You got that pencil? Hand it over,” he said and then placed his finger on the tip of the pencil, held it at a shallow angle to the page and swiping it in broad strokes laid down a layer of graphite on the page. Thirty seconds later two heads met over the shiny paper and tried to puzzle out the combination of letters in front of them.

“Lethe. Greek nd wld. Forget.” Ellie read aloud.

“Lethe? Never heard of it. If it weren’t for the reference to forgettin’ I wouldn’t think this was relevant to us at all but I don’t know if we should let it go.”

“What do you think the nd wld part is all about?” she asked, looking up from the page.

“And would? And world?” Joel tried.

“Underworld? Greek underworld?” she guessed.

“Could be, sure. Must be handy havin’ you round when you’re doin’ a crossword puzzle,” he hedged, trying to figure out how the hell Greek myth and legend fit into this whole mess.

*****

The next morning, after a long uncomfortable night being altogether too comfortable in each other’s arms, they each had a mug of steaming tea that tasted like pond scum. Joel told Ellie they couldn’t be certain that they were where they thought they were.

“Doesn’t make sense to assume that we are here,” he explained pointing at the map. “We need to go out and take bearin’s with the compass to see where we are.”

“Yeah, that makes sense. We would need to move in soon, there’s not that much food left in any case.”

“So, I reckon we should saddle up the horses and rise up some place high and see what there is to see.”

“Ok. Wait, horses? We have horses?”

“In the stables, two of them,” Joel confirmed.

“Can you ride a horse?” she asked.

Joel paused to think about it.

“I’m not certain, but I think I can, yeah. It’s like I think of doin’ a thing and my body tells me I can do it, even if I can’t remember ever havin’ done it.”

After they ate a meagre breakfast, Joel brought Ellie into the stables and quirked a smile when she saw the animals and began to coo over them immediately.

“I’ve seen you do this before,” he said, brushing his hand over the velvety softness of the paint horse’s nose.

“Do what?”

“Pet the horse. There were other people there, people I don’t recognise. You were tellin’ them somethin’ about a horse. About Boston. I can’t…” he trailed off and then sighed. “I wish I could tell you more.”

She smiled shyly up at him and they started to each tack up and load a horse. Joel freewheeled his way through it, trying to pick apart the new memory for anything that might be useful. The location looked odd, a horse stabled at an industrial complex from the look of it. The two people that came through most clearly, apart from Ellie, were a blonde haired woman and a man with shoulder length hair. Could they be the Tommy and Maria from the book? He still wasn’t sure. He wasn’t even certain that these people were friends, since they seemed to be carrying weapons even with him and Ellie around. Just as they were about to leave the stables Joel stopped her, tied the horses back to the rings they’d just unwound lead ropes from and swept her back out of the building.

“Hey, what are you doing?” she asked, struggling against him.

“What do you notice about all the stuff we found here?”

She looked blankly back at him.

“There’s somethin’ like five guns in there, plus that bow. We should probably take somethin’ with us because we have to have them for a fuckin’ reason.”

He jogged back into the cabin and grabbed a pair of 9mm pistols, the shotgun and the bow. He took a quick look through the other gear, added ammunition for the firearms, the quiver of arrows and took the combat knife and the smaller switchblade with the riveted handle. Back outside he handed Ellie the bow, one of the pistols and then handed over the switchblade.

“That’s yours,” he said, with firm certainty.

“Oh, thanks,” she said, then blushed as she vaguely remembered attacking him with it. She hoped he hadn’t had the same memory.

“Yeah, I remember you dressing game with it for some reason,” he said.

It seemed her secret was safe. For now. Joel held out the bow to her.

“You ever use one of these before?”

“Uh, I think so. I guess, maybe we should give it a go,” she said, ignoring the snorts and stomping of horses getting restless at being promised a trip outside and then being tied back up.

Joel went back into the stable and came back out with a bale of straw over his shoulder. Ellie ogled him from behind, hoping he wouldn’t turn too suddenly and spot her admiring the set of his muscles. She couldn’t help finding the display of raw masculine power attractive.

“Ok, let’s see what you can hit,” Joel said, lowering the bale to the ground end first so it formed a tall, narrow target.

Ellie waited until Joel was standing back next to her before taking an arrow from the plastic tube improvised quiver Joel had brought her. She knocked it to the string and took careful aim. Joel came behind her, gently rested a hand on her back and watched her as she sighted the bale. She turned and looked into his serious, dark eyes.

“Stop it,” she said, firmly.

“Stop what?”

“You’re breathing on my neck. It’s distracting.”

He snorted a breath out onto her delicate neck. Her head turned further round to his and she suddenly realised how close their eyes were. How close their mouths were. How good his hand felt on the bottom of her back. Her head began to tilt all by itself and his moved to mirror her. The bow began to lower toward the ground as her eyes flicked from his sensual mouth to his darkening eyes and back. Joel leaned into her, pausing so close she could feel the warmth of his mouth on hers. She came the rest of the way. Her lips were soft on his, and they felt like home. They would have kissed for longer had three things not happened in rapid succession. Ellie relaxed into the kiss a little too much, her fingers loosed and she dropped the bowstring into her forearm. When she yelped Joel jerked away from her like he’d been burned.

He turned his back for a long, deep breath and gathered himself into someone he might be able to make eye contact with in the mirror, rather than some guy trying to put the moves on some girl that barely knew him. The fact that he barely knew himself wouldn’t occur to him until hours later. He turned round again and looked at the arrow buried halfway in the dirt by their feet, still quivering. He was glad that she’d missed his feet. Her feet too. Under his watchful eye, and without touching her once, she demonstrated she could hit the target with more than a few arrows.

“Ok, how about we get this show on the road?” he asked as they retrieved the arrows from the straw bale.

They mounted up and rode out into the warm spring sunshine. Away from the trees surrounding the cabin, the ground opened up and they could see the way the land folded. They followed the pathway through what looked like overgrown fields until they found a cracked, pitted and poorly maintained stretch of tarmac road.

“We can’t have gone three miles yet, can we?” Ellie asked.

“I don’t think so; even goin’ at a walk we haven’t been ridin’ that long.”

Joel was now pretty certain they couldn’t be where the map said they should be. The land here was far less mountainous, with shallower contours than the land around the speck their path was directing them at. The road was supposed to be farther away as well. It all added up to a mystery he was determined to solve. Thankfully the ground here had several distinct contours. It meant sighting them with the bearing compass would help him figure out where they were. Pinpointing where they were took a few minutes. It turned out they were more than 15 miles from their expected location.  He was shocked. He had expected they would be off the path but the distance away was far more than he had anticipated. He wondered why they would be so far off course. There could be no good reason. For that matter, why didn’t there appear to be any people near the cabin. People normally minded having guests foisted upon them without warning, even if they stayed in an old and falling apart cabin. The more he thought about it, the more he realised this situation definitely had something fucked up about it. No phones, enough weapons to start a small war, and now a location far off the expected route. He felt like he was trying to solve a jigsaw puzzle, except he didn’t have any of the corners, much of the edges, and all of the pieces looked the same colour. And he didn’t have the lid of the box to help.

“So, question. What do we do now?” Ellie broke in on his thought process.

“What do you mean?”

“Well, there’s no directions marked on that map. We don’t know which way we were headed; if we started down there or in Jackson.”

“We got that coin from Snow whatever whatever Resort. Stands to reason we started out up there,” Joel thought a little longer. “If we were on our honeymoon, maybe we went down there and got waylaid on the way back. Which for some reason we are doin’ on horseback, without mobile phones, or electrical power, and with enough guns to start world war three.”

“Maybe we were on our way there after a honeymoon someplace else. But I guess that we might have more of a chance of find people who can tell us more about who were are in Jackson than taking our chances there,” she said, gesturing at the lower end of the marked route.

“Sure,” he nodded. “To Jackson it is then. After we pack our gear. We’ll head out tomorrow mornin’.”

He tried not to grimace where she could see over the idea of having to sleep next to her again.

“How far is it?” she asked.

“Looks like maybe eight miles back to the main trail on the road we are takin’, then another 12 or so to the town. Should be there tomorrow evenin’, barrin’ anythin’ extra weird happenin’.”

“Extra weird?”

“Yeah. This whole situation is pretty fucked already.”


	4. Chapter Four

Joel and Ellie had ridden a few hours until reaching the point their path had diverged from their expected route. . The fork they had meant to take was the more overgrown of the two that met here and Joel figured that in his memory lost state he had chosen the path that looked the smoother of the two for the ease of travel it would pose. A mile or so further than that they found a large barrier erected over the path. A new path had started to form where people attempted to go round the wooden obstacle. The wall encircled something. From the map it wasn’t clear what the something might be. All that was marked was a natural water source that would be roughly in the centre of the construction. Joel wondered what could possibly require shutting off from the world to this extent.

  
Twenty minutes of walking later they burst forth from the brush to stumble out onto a tarmac surface. A gate in the wall spanned the width of the road but it was barred and blocked with a bus that wedged the opening. Across the top a sign labelled where they were as Lethe. In the back of his mind Joel finally put the pieces together and sniggered.

“What’s funny?” asked Ellie, a tone in her voice suggesting she thought he might be making a joke at her expense.

“I put it together, why we can’t remember anythin’.”

“How come?”

“In your notebook you wrote about this place and how it’s connected to Greek mythology. The legends about the river Lethe say it makes you forget things. I think someone was bein’ clever when they named this place.”

“So you think we were here at some point?”

“Yeah, I guess. It’s right in the middle of the path we were supposed to be takin’.”

“You think we should go take a look? See if we can’t figure anything more out?”

“What?” Joel was incredulous. “And risk makin’ it worse?”

“How much fucking worse could it get, Joel?”

She had a point. They might find some trace of themselves here and searching for a gap in the fence couldn’t hurt. The walls were wooden, and looked relatively well maintained, but at the same time they weren’t guarded. Joel wondered if perhaps they had been put here to keep the people in the town inside rather than to keep anything out. He didn’t dwell too long on that thought, hoping instead that they would be on their way again in a couple of short hours. After a short time of searching they found a way into the enclave, a spot where some old chain link fencing had rusted away to nothing.

At first they saw nothing but ramshackle shacks and sheds, built much in the same style as the walls. Rounding a corner they found themselves in what served as the village square. They were confronted by the slack, blank faces of around twenty people.

“Who are you?”

“Who am I?”

“Where are we?”

“Oh yeah, I think we might have been here before,” Joel whispered under his breath, the words hidden by the clamour of the crowd.

“Look, I guess the best way for us to stay safe is to not drink anythin’. Don’t fill your bottles, don’t accept nothin’ and don’t let the horses drink either,” he muttered to Ellie before they started to approach the group.

“The horses? You think that whatever is going on can affect them too?”

“I’m not sure, but why risk it?”

The crowd seemed to have settled back down and they grew silent when they received no response from the two newcomers. Ellie and Joel slowly turned towards the apparent leader of the group. She approached them slowly, her swollen belly filled with a new life. Joel tried not to shudder at the thought of trying to raise an infant here. She was slow, but hadn’t yet taken on the waddling quality of the final stages of pregnancy. For a moment, an image of his wife’s body taking on the same shape played on Joel’s mind and he had to take a breath at the idea. Putting a pin into it for later he turned to his wife, planning to check on her before he went to talk to the other woman. He’d already been taking a step forward while rotating to his left to see her when he stopped stock still. All of the colour had drained from Ellie’s face and she looked paler than the white clouds in the sky. He worried for a moment that she was about to pass out.

“What’s wrong?” he hissed angrily, hoping it was something he could fix quickly because they were about to enter a situation that had the potential to get intensely political. Shotguns could end up being involved.

“She’s pregnant,” she said, dully.

“I can see that. You mind explainin’ how come that’s got you lookin’ like you’re about to puke and pass out?”

“What if I forgot that I’ve got a baby somewhere?”

Joel thought about it and gave her a thorough once over with his eyes. His anger disappeared, in part because of her distress and in part because he was running his eyes over a beautiful woman who probably wouldn't hit him for it. The colour came back into Ellie’s face with his appraisal.

“Show me your stomach, darlin’” he said, with no small amount of heat in his voice.

“What? No!”

“C’mon, it’ll only take a second and it’ll put your mind at rest.”

When Joel showed no sign of backing off on the demand Ellie tentatively pulled up the front of her grey sweater that was all she was wearing, stopping just over her belly button and trying to keep her breasts well covered. She didn’t want him to know she’d left off her bra, but she needn’t have worried. From the gleam in his eyes it was clear that he knew. His eyes went from her now crimson face down her neck and over what he could see of her cleavage. He skipped over the soft grey wool, and when his eyes reached her hips he slowed. His eyes grew darker, as if that was possible, as his pupils dilated. Her curves were soft and smooth, her skin pale, creamy, and importantly, unmarked. Though it took a while, his head began to shake.

“Darlin’, you ain’t ever had a baby. You look damn fine, but there ain’t some little one someplace missin’ you,” he said in a voice she barely recognised, it had grown so deep and husky with ill-concealed lust.

Her shirt dropped and they turned back to look at the approaching woman. She had stopped looking at them quizzically from a distance of several feet. She had honey blond hair, not like the woman Joel remembered with the horse and he couldn’t see the long haired man anywhere either. Her dirty clothes were torn and stretched tightly around her stomach. It didn’t look like they were prepared for the future to any great degree.

“I’m Leah. I’m the leader here. Would you like to come inside and get something to eat?”

They looked at each other before shrugging and following Leah into the larger building that took up one side of the square. It looked like a long hut, with a hole in the roof at one end over the firepit. The sides of the room were lined with benches and at the end opposite the firepit there were livestock in an enclosure.

One of the walls was covered in writing, some on chalkboards that had been screwed to the wall, some painted or scrawled directly onto the plaster. Two of the sentences at the top of one of the chalkboard caught Joel’s eye. ‘Leah is the leader. Leah is pregnant.’ Must be handy to have a system, he thought. He was concerned that visiting here would make them forget again, but if these people knew anything then they could stand the risk. They still had everything that had used to remember who they were the first time round. The prohibition he’d placed on Ellie was a precaution.

Upon entering the hut the crowd that had preceded them inside had slowed their conversations but these had picked up when Leah fired off questions to members of the crowd. They tried not to feel left out and drifted toward each other to have a conversation of each other when they heard a woman across the room call out for Ellie.

Both she and another young woman responded and attention shifted in the hut until everyone was focussed on the three of them.

“Oh, sorry, I meant Ellie Williams,” the woman, pointing not at the redhead at Joel’s side, but at the other woman, the brunette across the room.

“I am Ellie Williams,” Ellie insisted.

“Oh yeah?” asked the imposter. “How d’you plan to prove it? I have my diary.”

“I have picture ID. And it sounds like you have my fucking diary,” Ellie bristled.

“Easy,” Joel said, rubbing a soothing hand over her back.

Ellie dug through her pack and produced the military ID she had found at the cabin. Leah looked conflicted, as if she didn’t want to get involved, but eventually after both parties appealed to her agreed the book should be handed back.

“Then we can discuss your violation of our rules,” she added, after the imposter and her friend went to recover the diary.


	5. Chapter Five

“What violation? We haven’t done anythin’,” Joel grumbled.

“The Hotel California rule,” she snapped, and pointed to the painted rules on the wall.

A song burst into Joel’s head and his fingers twitched as he longed for a musical instrument he didn’t know he could play. What Leah was saying became clear a moment later: they were in trouble because they had left. More specifically they were in trouble because they came back but it hardly seemed worth pointing that out. Discussion with the town members broke out, with Ellie and Joel repeatedly shushed and excluded. Eventually the knot of people opened and their punishment was announced.

“As we have plenty of space, we have decided that you will be initiated and we will give you 30 days of tough labour before we switch you out of rotation to more easy tasks.”

*****

The initiation, as it happened, was a strange ceremony in which they were to drink from the Lethe and pledge themselves to the celebration of endless second chances. It clicked with Joel what the people here were about. They worshipped the intemporal, the fact that each morning dawned with a blank slate. Even without all of his memories, without knowing the worst his life could offer he understood why it would appeal to some. He and Ellie had been handed her notebook, a twin of the one in which they found the imprint about Lethe. Then they were taken to their cell.

“Here’s what I think. I think we have to get out of here,” Ellie whispered urgently.

“There’s too many of them right now, even with our weapons. We need to wait until we can sneak out, maybe after dark,” he murmured back, moving close so that it looked like they were sharing lover’s intimacies.

“Oh, good plan, let’s go along with the ceremony, forget who we are and stay here forever,” she snarked.

“That’s not what I meant. It’s just…” he trailed off. “If you pretend to drink you won’t forget and we can escape when everyone else is stoned out of their minds.”

Ellie considered for a moment and figured that it was better than no plan. They would be able to get out, hopefully without hurting anyone. Somewhat reluctantly she nodded her head and they began to scheme.

As the sun began to set they were brought from the shack to the longhouse. Inside the hut had been decorated with hundreds of candles and in the centre stood an old tin bath filled with muddy water. Beyond hoping to avoid memory loss, Joel fervently hoped neither of them would get sick with waterborne pathogens, or parasites or whatever else might be leeching into the water.

After promises and a sermon that felt oddly familiar they were handed the dipper and told to take a sip. Joel lifted the dripping gourd to his mouth, held his lips tightly closed and faked a swallow with every sign of disgust. This was evidently what the crowd had expected as cheers erupted all around and Leah gestured to pass the ladle over to Ellie. A quick repetition and a second round of cheers sounded in the close atmosphere of the room. After considerable back patting and hand shaking the Lethans began to pass the dipper around. Some drank deep gulps, some only bare sips but the smiles of rapturous joy were ubiquitous. Joel thought he was glad it was water, not Kool-Aid. Then he wondered where that thought had come from as it was moving through his mind unattached with nothing to connect to and bring context. Watching the room, Joel figured they could sneak out to get some rest before enacting the next phase of their plan. Since their acceptance into the group the Lethans had been very relaxed around them, they had no guard and at no point had the people taken their weapons. Whatever kind of prison this might be it was the strangest Joel had ever encountered. Not that he was sure that he had been to a prison before now.

Joel sent Ellie to where their horses were stabled. He’d puzzled that out early that afternoon while walking under heavy guard around the encampment. He hadn’t actually found the stables. He’d smelled them. After watching her walk away from him as far as he could see he turned toward the longhouse. Lifting the latch, he slipped inside. It gave him pause for a moment that the building wasn’t even locked. He stood for a very long moment examining the collected memories of the town. What he was about to do wasn’t just an effective distraction to help them escape. Burning down the hut would erase the rules that held this society together. The rules they had established to keep them safe. To give their lives structure. He rationalised it to himself that he was giving them an opportunity to escape just like he was. If they went back to how things were before that wasn’t his fault.

He stooped at the embers of the fireplace, blowing air over the coals to find a hot one. When he’d found his best choice he added tinder and blew flames into existence. It always looked a little like magic to him. Within moments the fire was blazing again and he moved round the room with burning brands. Working from deep in the building toward the door he was cold, calculating and methodical.

He stood for a moment in the doorway, looking at the conflagration, and hoping that he had done the right thing. He tossed the last branch into the door. A noise behind him made him turn, hand already reaching for the pistol he’d strapped to his hip before he and Ellie had left their shack.

Ellie gasped at the sight of him, almost aglow with the light behind him. He looked like a raging, vengeful demi-god. His muscles were exaggerated by the light and shadow the blazing fire behind him cast. She felt like touching him. As if she couldn’t stop herself, her fingers rose into the air, pointing at him in invitation. Unexpectedly he took them. She started at the feeling of his warm, callused hand closing over hers. It swamped her, his hand being so much larger than her own.

“We goin’?” he asked in a husky voice barely above a whisper.

She shook herself.

“Yeah. Left the horses back a little ways off. Didn’t want to spook them by bringing them too close to the fire.”

They walked quickly through the town, Ellie tugging on Joel’s hand she was still holding as they skirted through the tight alleys. The horses were growing agitated at the smell of smoke in the air when they reached them. The head shaking and stomping made the act of saddling them more difficult than it had to be, but they were soon on their way again. Riding slowly away made Joel tense, but he knew that they needed to put some distance between them and the town before they could speed up or risk being heard fleeing. They shouldn’t have worried. Moments after they left Joel heard shouts carrying on the breeze. The distraction was working. No one pursued them and the new day dawned fresh and clear. They followed the track up toward Jackson, hoping they’d make the city in the next day or so.  

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have no regrets about the Hotel California rule. It amused me. Anyone who needs context for the Kool Aid reference should google Jonestown at their own risk: it's not a pretty story.


	6. Chapter Six

“So that book tell you anythin’ we din’t already know?”

Ellie wondered how much she should tell him. The book had been a complete mental clusterfuck. Among other things, she had learnt that she and Joel weren’t married. It was a ruse they had come up with to protect her from actions more than leers from other men. In most cases it seemed even the leers stopped after an angry glare from the bearded one. She’d written that she wanted more from him than he had seemed ready to give. There was one cringe-worthy page where she’d perfected her signature with his name. Her supposed married name. Even thinking about it was making her uncomfortable. How was she supposed to align this knowledge with the repeating images in her brain of his body pressed against hers? Of the kiss they had shared. His admission of “feelings”. Maybe her observations from when she wrote in the book were off. Maybe he was acting like this bow because he thought she was his wife. She knew she should tell him the truth.

“I didn’t get much of a chance to read it yet. I’ll let you know if I find anything.” Being brave could wait for another time.

“Sounds good. What d’you say we find us some water and wash off the smell of the smoke?”

They’d seen a river off at a distance from the trail and the map showed it was barely half an hour's hike from their place on the path. With the roughness of the ground and how steep the path was they elected to walk the horses. A short walk along the river found them a place where two huge boulders had fallen into the water and formed a pool. The water eddied on the edge, but the pool’s surface was clear and where it sat in the sun the water felt warm and welcome after the filth and sweat of their escape.

Joel pulled his shirt off over his head, kicked off his boots, yanked off his socks, dropped his pants and with a backward glance at Ellie pulled off his briefs as well. Her jaw dropped while she watched him wade into the water and disappear beneath it with a splash. Standing chest deep in the water, Joel enjoyed the feeling of cool water brushing his skin. He washed himself with huge double handfuls of water, before he realised he couldn’t hear Ellie doing the same. Turning slowly, he tried to prepare himself for seeing her undressed. He needn’t have concerned himself. She was sitting on the bank watching him, her arms hugging her knees to her chest.

“C’mon in, the water’s beautiful,” he said, with a grin, and used his powerful arms to splash a great wave of tannin tinted water at her.

“Uh, I don’t think I can swim,” she said, with her head down and fiddling with her fingers.

Joel fought hard against the urge to laugh. Not everyone had the money to pay for lessons, or could get out to the beach or lake and learn to swim. That’s how he’d learned, watching other people at the lake as a boy. Besides, right now it didn’t seem like the only problem was that she couldn’t swim. Right now it seemed like the bigger problem was that she was afraid of the water. She looked achingly lonely and small curled up there on the edge of the pool, unwilling to even take off her boots and paddle.

“There’s no current, you’ll be ok as long as you stay on your feet,” he said, wading back toward her. He paused, cautiously, when the water began to lap at his navel. “I can come get you, hold you up?”

He wasn’t sure it was the right choice, the idea of wading naked and dripping wet toward her; but the alternative was asking his wife to turn her back while he put more clothes on, and he’d be damned if he would cause her that pain. She didn’t need to feel him rejecting her, especially when he was remembering all the things he liked doing with her. The carnal to the mundane, like walking through the forest together, him teaching her how to skin a kill, even sharing a laugh around a campfire over a book character’s name. All of it reminded him how lucky he was to have Ellie in his life. He couldn’t quite remember how they met, couldn’t imagine the circumstances their relationship had evolved under, but he was enduringly glad that they had and they’d ended up married.

Ellie started to remove her boots, and then pulled off her shirt. The movement tugged Joel’s attention away from his daydream and he tried hard not to leer. He ended up watching a point just above her left shoulder until she moved and he had to look at her to decide what to do next. She had stripped to her heather-grey underwear, a sports bra and bikini briefs. Normally he would consider such items only peripherally sexy, but he couldn’t remember having had sex for a while and he found her unusually attractive. Her courage seemed to flee her when the water lapped just above her knees. He hoped he was doing the right thing as he waded back out of the water to get her. When the water flowed from his hips he saw her eyes flick downward, a long way down, and then back to his face and stay there. She went delightfully crimson, from her chest, slowly up her neck and into her cheeks.

He stopped a few feet in front of her and held out his hand. She took his left hand with her right and took another small step toward him. When she smiled at Joel, he was grateful that the water had been cold and put off certain parts of his anatomy from responding enthusiastically to the gesture. They walked hand in hand into deeper water until he felt safely covered again.

“You want to try floatin’?” he asked. “Could save your life if you fall into water. Would at least give me tome to reach you.” And the practice would give him a legitimate reason to keep his hands on her body. He didn’t mention that part.

She hemmed and hawed until he grabbed her by the hips and pulled her into position and set her floating, as if he was coaxing a child. Holding her by the shoulders he looked down and was momentarily startled at the sight of her hair changing colour from red to blonde and back again. He grunted in surprise and shook his head to clear it. As he met her concerned green eyes he realised nothing had changed for real, but he now had a collection of memories about taking his daughter to the local pool. In particular, the memory of trying to usher a loud and inquisitive five year old through a crowded men’s changing room stuck out. He smiled softly at the memory of her asking “why is that man’s winkie so much smaller than yours, daddy?” At the time, he’d gone scarlet with embarrassment, and partly dragged the girl from the room, still tugging on his own shirt, fastening his pants and stopping to put on his shoes in the lobby.

Ellie floated in his arms, though he provided barely any support, staring up at the cloudless sky until the two of them started to feel chilled by the water. Seeking warmer water, Joel brought them both toward the boulders that formed the breakwater. Years of weather had smoothed the rock and the eddying current didn’t empty water from here, leaving it to be warmed by the sun.

“So, you remember how you got that by any chance?” Joel asked, pointing at the seething scar on her forearm.

“Uh, no,” she said. She was telling the truth here, though she had mentioned it tangentially in her diary. Seemed something about it was important and had led her to meet Joel. While she wanted them both to remember everything about each other and themselves, she didn’t want to encourage him in case he remembered that they weren’t an item and wouldn’t hold her like this anymore.

Joel was stymied. He tried to think up another topic of conversation that didn’t amount to “ways I would like to touch you”, or “things I’d like for you to do to me”.

“Ok. Jackson in a couple of days now, tops. You lookin’ forward to bein’ home?”

“I’m hoping we’ll meet someone who can clear things up for us. I hope we haven’t gotten any major details wrong.”

“Like what?

“I dunno, like maybe we don’t know each other at all and are married to other people.”

“Well, darlin’, if that was the case I would have to leave them cause all I can think about is you.”

Fuck. It was going to be harder to tell him the truth than she thought.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Another shorter chapter than I had planned. It would be longer but I'm struggling with chronic pain this week and wanted to put something up rather than wait and perhaps leave you without an update. I have plenty more story for this one planned, so hopefully a longer chapter next week.


	7. Chapter Seven

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Merry Christmas everyone, hope that you're having a great day. Popped onto my PC in a lull in activity to post this one for you. It was a part of a larger chapter but I figured since it was Christmas I would give you all this segment. I have a feeling you'll all know why when you read the chapter to come. Have a wonderful festive season, and thanks for reading.

The storm had been coming for several hours. They had watched the sky darken and purple like a bruise with grim faces. Leaving the river bank to travel onwards had been tough enough without bad weather to slow their path.

“Looks like we might be about to get wet,” Joel said, resigned.

“Ugh. Want to find some shelter?”

They turned to face the way they were heading. They’d reached an out of town retail park, the vast car parks mostly empty of cars and the ones that were left were rusting hulks. By now Joel expected nothing less. Their choices for shelter were a crumbling Best Buy, an anonymous consignment store or a small mall, glass enclosing several smaller stores. The glass had leaked and the stores had all been looted at some point or another, but they managed to find a small corner in a bookstore that was dry and clean and safe to bed down for the night.

The horses were put together in the outer lobby. Joel hoped that they would act as a rudimentary alarm system. He still had no idea what had happened to society, but his experiences in Lethe had left him extremely wary. Every nerve felt raw and exposed and if the feeling in his chest wasn’t palpitations brought on by stress it was the beginnings of a heart attack and to be honest neither would surprise him right now. He had put their sleeping bags out next to each other in the corner. Ellie’s was closest to the wall so he could confront any danger with her as safe as she could be behind him.

Though he was somewhat sure that whatever danger he was expecting could chew straight through him, at least this way he had some chance that he wouldn’t shoot her by mistake. For a second he had a horrifyingly detailed image in his mind of her in his arms, tiny, delicate and utterly destroyed. The picture was so vivid he couldn’t breathe and tears sprang into his eyes. Even as he shook his head to clear it, something about the image niggled at him. In some way he couldn’t easily pin down the imagining was wrong. He chose not to examine it too closely. He didn’t want to face the pain, convinced that he must have used a fragment of memory that he couldn’t clearly summon.

Ellie settled herself down into her bag, noting that Joel had put them closer together than they had ever been before. He padded across the floor in near complete darkness from checking on the horses and lay down stiffly next to her. She heard him zipper his bag closed, then the rasp of nylon as he struggled to get comfortable. He sighed heavily and then turned over with a plasticky whisper. She jolted when his hand pressed onto her stomach, pulling her back into his body. Her heart fluttered and she felt a spike of arousal at how her body moulded to fit his. She had to remind herself that they weren’t married. Since the time they had spent lazing together in the river pool her desire for him had ratcheted upward with every expected and unexpected touch.

He leaned close, softly kissed her ear, on the jaw, the soft skin of her throat. Her body shuddered, and she wondered what it would do to their relationship if she didn’t tell him before something happened. He began to speak, to recite, his voice husky and low and intense. As he spoke, his hands drew across her nylon wrapped body, down the curves of her waist, hips and thighs.

“Licence my rovin’ hands, and let them go, Before, behind, between, above below. O my America! My new-found-land, My Kingdom safeliest when with one man mann’d.”

He nuzzled his face into the junction of her neck and shoulder. The bristles of his beard tickled at her soft skin before his lips touched to her collarbone.

“Jesus Joel,” she breathed, heavily. “You sure know how to romance a girl.”

He grinned. “Mmm,” he mumbled as his lips and tongue explored her skin.

“Fuck, Joel. I don’t want to wind you up and let you down. But we- I- can’t. Not here.”

“Mmm,” he mumbled again. “That’s Ok darlin’. How about you let me know when you’re ready?”

“Sure,” she said, wriggling round in his arms to face him and ignoring the grunt as she pressed a little harder than decent on an area that was more sensitive than usual. She kissed his cheekbone, her warm lips soft on the hairless skin. “Tell you, Joel. You can read me poetry any damn time you want, big man.”

Joel groaned and tightened his hands on her hips, pulling her to him. He gasped out a deep breath and let her go, rolling to his back. He put an arm over his face and tried to will his desperate cock to calm down. It wasn’t getting the message. Ever since he’d kissed her at the ranch he’d found his control around her slipping. He’d been away on his honeymoon and he was ready to consummate his marriage all over again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The poem Joel reads to Ellie comes from the poetry book. He's been reading it, found "To His Mistress Going To Bed", which you can read at this link: http://www2.open.ac.uk/openlearn/poetryprescription/to-his-mistress-going-to-bed.html
> 
> When I figure how to do URLs in the end notes I'll clean that up!


	8. Chapter Eight

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ellie and Joel wake up in the night.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the long hiatus. Life sort of got in the way for a while and I stopped being able to write for a while. Hope you enjoy this chapter, and I should be back to regular posts fairly soon. 
> 
> I also got distracted by a fic for another fandom, and that is still ongoing but with any luck with help give me more ideas for this fandom. We can only hope.

They slept, uneasily. In their newly minted form, neither felt comfortable sharing a sleeping space with the warmth and bulk of another person. In the darkest part of the night, they awoke to the screams and stamping of panicked horses. For a moment, all Joel felt was victory. His invented alarm had worked. Then, with a muttered curse he wrestled his way free from the sleeping bag. Trapped momentarily he swore to himself that the next time they had to sleep somewhere questionable he would leave it unzipped and use it as a blanket. By the time he had gotten out of the restrictive nylon tube and armed himself the horses had gone ominously silent.

“Stay here,” he hissed.

“Fuck that, what if you need my help?”

“What if you get hurt?”

“What if you do?” Ellie whispered, forcefully.

“I ain’t goin’ to get hurt. Stay here,” Joel growled, pointing to the floor with a stab of his forefinger.

“No!”

Ellie had gotten out of her own bag, stretched and grabbed her bow. Joel had to remind himself that she had proven an effective ally in the past and that she could shoot the bow at least as well as he could. And she might prove to be right, if they were together he could keep an eye on her, rather than letting some goon sneak up behind her.

She was determined, no matter what, that he wasn’t going to leave her behind. The intimacy they had cultivated between them meant he probably had good reasons to try to protect her, but she was still struggling to forget that first night they spent together and the fear she had felt when he left her alone in the bed.

“Ok, I tell you what. Get your stuff together,” he said, his voice still low and soft, but full of a purposefulness his voice hadn’t had earlier when he whispered sweet nothings into her ear. “I was just goin’ to go check on the horses but now I think maybe it’s best if we just move on.”

They gathered their gear and sneaked toward the lobby to see if whatever had terrified the horses was still around. When they got to the big picture window in the front of the store, Ellie turned green and Joel yanked her away from the disturbing sight. She buried herself in his chest, gasping quietly, sobbing and juddering against him.  He understood. The sight of their horses apparently torn limb from bloodied limb by a group of… things was what had confronted them when they looked through the window. They were roughly human shaped, but carried themselves differently. Humans didn’t, couldn’t tear apart a horse with their bare hands. Or scrap between themselves for the tastiest morsels. Of raw meat. He had a sickening realisation. This. This was what had caused everything to crumble, society to collapse, and he was surviving in the aftermath of something that changed all of humanity forever.

Shit. What if this was the reason he had the gas mask? What if he should be wearing it already? Was he already sick? And why didn’t Ellie have one if they were such vital pieces of equipment?

They couldn’t afford the time necessary to ponder each of these questions in detail. He led her back into the bookstore to grab hold of their gear, stripping saddlebags and weighing up what to take and what to leave as quietly as possible. A terrifying few minutes that felt decades too long later they were ready to leave. Joel turned toward the front of the store again but dismissed it quickly. The main reason to go that way would be the horses, clearly no longer an issue, and there wasn’t enough cover in the atrium that he was sure they would be able to creep through unnoticed.

The cash desk at the rear of the store offered an alternative. There was a door behind it, leading into the service area of the old mall. Keeping low, the two of them crept deeper into the store, past the “latest” celebrity autobiography and the biggest sellers in crime fiction. The carpet beneath their feet stank of mildew and Joel found himself hoping again that the pathogen, whatever it was, wasn’t airborne. Darkly, he figured that if it was there wasn’t much that he could do about it, except pray he didn’t hurt Ellie if he did become one of those things. Zombies. That was probably the best term for them, but they didn’t act like any of the zombies he’d seen in movies growing up.

His quiet panic had brought them to the steel door. He tried it and praised all the deities he didn’t believe in when he found it was unlocked and opened smoothly. Once through, he barricaded the door with a huge cage on wheels, still filled with unshelved books. The store’s last ever delivery.

“Phew,” Ellie sighed, tucking herself under Joel’s arm for comfort.

Joel let her nestle closer and started looking around for the nearest exit. To his left was natural, pre-dawn light percolating in through a broken window at chest height. To the right there was nothing but collapsing boxes spilling their content and clutter and darkness. Choosing the easier route he took Ellie’s hand and gently pulled her along behind him. She wept quietly for the horses and he remembered her endearing affection for them. She had gone so far as to give the animals names. They couldn’t have been anything like the animals original names because they never responded to them, but it made him smile to remember it.

His heart ached for her, and though he wished he could take her pain upon himself he knew the only cure for grief was time. While he speculated on the subject, a feeling that he knew this better than most came to him. A dim memory of a deadly bite on the chest of a brown haired woman. Her face felt familiar and he could feel the remnants of feelings for her. It wasn’t the same as he had felt for Ellie. There was friendship, affection and for a moment he recalled her riding him with an intensity that made him wish his brain had better timing. But there wasn’t the same depth of feeling that he felt for his wife. She was everything to him and he knew that losing her wasn’t an option for him. God, but he ached for her, could barely wait to get her somewhere safe.

“We need to move, c’mon,” he breathed into her ear.

She sniffed, then swiped the back of her hand across her nose, and seemed to pull herself together.

“Ok, let’s go.”


	9. Chapter Nine

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ellie and Joel find their way out of the mall.

They moved through the dank corridors of the loading and storage areas of several stores hunting for an exit. When he heard it a primal response took over. His bowels turned to water, every hair on his body stood up and he found himself reaching for a weapon before he even knew for sure that there was anything to face. The clicking noise didn’t mean anything to him directly but something told him to get down, be quiet and find a way out. Fast. The hand that hadn’t dropped to the knife on his belt grabbed Ellie, pulling her down between his knees and pressing her against the nearest dumpster with his body. He might not be much use to her but he could offer her such protection as he was able.

“What the hell is that?” whispered Ellie.

“Shh,” Joel hissed, sharply. “Stay down, stay quiet,” he said, voicing it with the least possible amount of breath.

The clicks were slow and sounded fairly far off. He figured they had some time to get out, even if it meant making some noise. The dumpster across from them was underneath one of the windows letting in thin, pre-dawn sunshine.

“Stay right there,” he mumbled. “Do not move, promise me.”

Ellie crossed her heart with her index finger. He dropped his pack to the floor, swooped across the hallway and climbed onto the dumpster as quietly as possible. His footsteps on the lid made a dully echoing metallic noise and he cringed at the sound. Turning to the window he probed at the flaking paint and encrusted filth. If he could get it open he might be able to squeeze through. Even if he couldn’t, Ellie could and he would feel much happier knowing she was outside where she might be safer.

The window frame was cleanly rotten through and with hardly a tug he was able to pull it from the wall and gingerly set it down propped against the dumpster. He gestured at Ellie, and she grabbed his pack and moved across the hallway. She took the window frame and put it where it couldn’t fall and make noise. Joel turned his attention to pulling the bars that blocked their path from the window opening. The mortar around them was old, loose and soft. With a bit of furtive effort he pulled the first one free and pushed it out the window, dropping it onto the grass with a quiet thunk.

“There’s enough room for you to get through,” he whispered, roughly.

“Fuck no!” Ellie managed to exclaim in spite of the low volume she was speaking at. “I’m not fucking leaving you here. We go when we can both fit.”

“This bar ain’t as loose as the other. I ain’t sure I’m goin’ to be able to get out through there. I’ll go look for some other way out and come find you.” He looked at her face and recognised the repeated fear she had expressed during their time together. “I ain’t plannin’ on leavin’ you, I swear.”

The clicking at the end of the corridor grew faster and closer. The creature, whatever it was, was putting them into a much more dangerous situation. Joel dragged Ellie toward him, pulled her quickly into his arms and kissed her, hard. His teeth bashed hers through her lips. They’d both have bruises later.

“Go!” he rasped, shoving her toward the window, then handed her their packs.

As soon as she was through he heard a scream from the end of the corridor and couldn’t decide whether to grab the bar and wrench it out or turn and fight. At the sound of a scream from outside the decision was made for him. His muscles shrieked at him as they bunched and he hauled with everything he had. He was fuelled with fear and rage. The mortar gave and the bar came free. He threw himself through the newly enlarged gap and turned to wallop the screaming, drooling creature coming after him.

After crushing the head of the afflicted thing he turned to look for his woman. Reduced to his most basic instincts he was keen to defend his mate. Her face was pale and streaked with blood. At her feet lay a crumpled corpse. He felt a surge of pride at her strength. As the adrenaline faded he thought it was strange that he wasn’t more freaked out. He could tell that she was. Her face was chalky and lightly tinged with green, her hands were shaking and he wished they could take the time for him to hold her and calm her down.

“Ellie? Ellie, look at me,” he said, his voice soft but still shaking from the rush of killing. Her eyes looked the size of saucers as they raised from the metal bar, bloodied and embedded in the head of the corpse. “Darlin’ you never had a choice. It was him or you.”

“Joel, he… he… he was, it’s uh, a baby. He’s only a kid.”

“C’mere Ellie. Don’t matter who he was, how old he was. Matters that you’re still alive, still breathin’, still not hurt. Don’t know what I would do if anythin’ happened to you.”

Ellie shuddered and he worried that she wouldn’t be able to focus and get out of the danger they were still in. He kissed the top of her head and stooped to grab their packs. He found their weapons, handing her the pistol.

“C’mon darlin’ we got to go. We can’t hang around here. Gotta find someplace safe.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi all, thanks for sticking with this story. I have got more yet to come, some already written and I know what I want the ending to be, so hopefully I should be able to post this regularly until we get to that point. No promises though. I've learned my lesson: finish the whole damn thing before you start posting, or this happens.


	10. Chapter Ten

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> They reach Jackson

Joel had forced a grumpy, complaining heavily-laden Ellie to march several miles as fast as they could before he would let them rest, even briefly. They’d moved out of the town and found a small copse of trees to rest within. He had struggled to relax at first, and found himself taking a stout stick and beating everything he considered might possibly provide cover for one of those things. After, sweating and breathing heavily he jogged back to the sleeping bags Ellie had laid out and stripped off his shirt. He folded his legs under himself, and then rolled down to his back. Ellie was lying on her side, facing outward and hadn’t moved since he got up to take his fear out on the unsuspecting foliage.

“Ellie,” he tried to start, not really sure what he could offer more than platitudes and hollow words that wouldn’t do anything to assuage the trauma raging inside her.

She didn’t respond. He decided to move toward her and, if she would let him, hold her and provide whatever comfort she could take from warmth and solidity of his body. The shuffling of the nylon bag toward her gained her attention, he could tell from the way she stopped breathing. At his touch she stiffened, then gasped out a deep breath and began to shudder in his arms.

“It’s OK babygirl. Come here and let me help you. Let it all out.”

Ellie half-turned and he tugged her the rest of the way, guiding her face into his chest and letting her sob. Eventually her juddering breaths slowed, and the tears leaked from her eyes more slowly. Her skin was blotchy, her nose and cheeks wet and her eyes swollen and red. She looked pitiful and he wished he knew the way to make her feel better. He shushed her gently and stroked her hair with a large hand. His felt conflicted, acting in such a fatherly manner to a woman he found so attractive.

Ellie’s face reappeared from his chest and she looked up at him for barely a second before she climbed toward his face and pressed her mouth fiercely to his. Joel grunted surprise into her mouth and worked on catching her up. His lips poured every ounce of everything he couldn’t find the words to say into her. He hauled her onto his body so he could touch her more easily, and took the weight of one of her breasts into his large palm. He stroked over her and his hands took a happy trip all over the curves of her body. Her ass felt like it was made for his palms. Her fingers dipped beneath his waistband and reached for him. He realised that this wasn’t the time and that he had to stop her.

“Ellie, stop,” he said, pushing her one way and his hips the other.

Her face crumpled and he thought that she was about to start crying again. She didn’t. He watched her pull herself together and the hurt disappeared from her eyes, to be replaced by fire and steel will. He would be in for it, clearly. Memories of women yelling at him rose, the look in all of their eyes exactly like Ellie’s. He was obviously very good at pissing women off. He tried to get an explanation out in front of the peak of her rage wave.

“Ellie, call me old-fashioned, but I ain’t goin’ to fuck you out here in the dirt. There might be any number of those things out here and I don’t much fancy bein’ caught with my ass hangin’ out my pants.”

Ellie stared hard at the man before rolling over briskly and huffing out a breath. He might be right but nobody said she had to like it. She fell asleep angry and when Joel shook her awake an hour and a half later she felt no better. After biting Joel’s head off three times when he tried to start various conversations she started to feel even worse. Every time she spoke she could see the hurt in his eyes and knew he was just trying to help. They carried on in uneasy silence.

Joel wound up using the partly ruined buildings as a guide. His map pointed them to the North East of town and they had approached from the South. Turning right and keeping their distance from the infested shells they’d managed to avoid any unwanted attention. He marched over broken roads, fields that used to be parking lots or baseball pitches, and one set of somehow still gleaming railroad tracks before they found the path, covered in hoof, boot and paw-prints. They both silently hoped it would lead them to sanctuary. When they turned the last corner in the path and could at last see past the shoulder of rock to the walls and gates of what remained of Jackson, Joel found his feet briefly rooted to the ground.

“What if this is a mistake?”

Ellie turned a glare on him. After their fight that night, followed by a several hour route march she wasn’t in the best frame of mind to be changing their plan. When she recognised self-doubt clouding his features, she realised he didn’t want to suggest an alternate destination. He needed reassurance.

“Joel, love, if this does turn out to be like Lethe I have no doubt in my mind that you will fuck them up if we have to. It’s not going to be like that because we live here, like the diary told us. But if it did, I know you’d do whatever was necessary to get us out of there. Now,” she said, holding out her hand, “you coming home big guy?”

Joel responded well to Ellie holding confidence in him in trust for when he felt it himself. He took her small, callused hand in his much larger, only slightly rougher one and they carried on up the path to the gates of the town.

Somehow, through the blood, fire and dust, the two of them had made it. The sign above the gate said “Jackson”. They were finally at their destination. Now they had to hope their gamble in coming here had paid off. There were two men guarding the gate on platforms more than twenty feet above them. Both had shotguns, high-powered sniper rifles with huge scopes, and a veritable arsenal of home-made explosive ordnance. Joel shuddered at how easily he could have been picked off. Both he and Ellie could have been snuffed out like candles from so far away they’d never have heard it coming. The fact they were still alive was hope-filled: these sentries were equipped and likely trained to take out the undesirables on sight.

When they got close enough to be recognised the guards’ expressions were strikingly easy to read. Their high eyebrows read naked shock or surprise at the sight of them. He couldn’t agree more when he thinks about it. They are filthy in spite of their efforts to stay fresh, burned, bruised and battered, and he doubts either of them looks like they have the energy to go another step.

“Ellie?” the younger of the two calls down. “Is that Joel with you? Where the hell have you **been**? It’s been a month and you was only meant to be gone a week. We thought a bloater got you, for sure.”

His older companion waves at him until he quiets down, and he manages to insert a word edge-wise.

“Parker, go and find Maria, she needs to be here.”

“She out. With the power crew.”

“Tommy then. He needs to know his brother is home,” he said, while lowering a drawbridge and then raising what looks like a portcullis that Joel thinks he might remember helping to make.


	11. Chapter Eleven

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ellie and Joel are welcomed to Jackson.

The long-haired guy he’d seen in his memory of Ellie petting a horse was running towards them; his long strides easily ate up the distance separating them. Joel figured this guy for the brother, Tommy, he barely remembered and winced ahead of time over the awkward conversation they were bound to have. The gate guard had told them to come through the gate and “wait right there” with a hand gesture that indicated a grassy area. Since he could manage this without revealing his ignorance of the place he’d complied, quietly. He put his hand onto Ellie’s shoulder and leaned into her conspiratorially.

“Ellie, I don’t...”

“Think we should tell everyone we don’t remember? Me either,” she interrupted.

“Uh, yeah,” he agreed. “But I have a feelin’ I won’t be able to bluff my way through with this guy,” he added, waving a hand at the approaching man.

“Guess not,” she said. She was clearly about to add something more but the man, Tommy , he reminded himself, had gotten within hearing range and she decided against it.

“Brother, you have no idea how glad I am to see your ornery ass again,” the new arrival breathlessly said while throwing his arms around an alarmed Joel.

“Tommy, can we go someplace to talk? Ellie and me, we got somethin’ we need to tell you about.”

Joel had to admit, he was impressed with the way his brother held his cool when they’d finished explaining to him. It wouldn’t occur to him until hours later that it was possible this wasn’t the first interaction with people returning from Lethe he had had. He felt a twinge of guilt over not returning from his expedition with the supplies the town had sent them seeking in the wilds. Unless you counted Ellie’s comic books as “Educational Materials” they’d not brought back anything from the mission list, and the fact they couldn’t remember the time spent together like “the old days” as his brother had put it meant that the mission could be considered entirely failed. He’d tried to get Tommy to elaborate further on those old days but he’d been rebuffed by Ellie, with a reminder that them trying to force memories had never worked before.

Tommy had shown them to the small cabin they shared, via the community hub with its kitchens, trading area and doctor. And then he had left, saying his wife was bound to want to throw a celebration and with the mayor out of action that left him with a town to run.

*****

Everyone here was treating him with kid gloves. He’d barely spoken to anyone in the week between their arrival and now. It had been too weird with all the sad looks. He knew Tommy and Ellie had kept their secret close so he knew it couldn’t be because people were sad he had lost his memory. He had to figure it couldn’t be for some good, happy reason. Deep down he already suspected that he had either become separated from his daughter or she had died. Finding out that Maria was the blonde he remembered but not his daughter had sent him spiralling downward. He couldn’t always stop himself from trying to force up new memories but he feared it at the same time.

Since he and Ellie had woken up in that shack he’d committed arson, killed animals with his bare hands to eat them, smashed in the head of something that maybe used to be human and lusted endlessly after a girl that was young enough to be his granddaughter. She might be his wife but they barely knew each other and his imagination couldn’t leave her alone. It had taken every molecule of his restraint to stop when she jumped him after they fended off that chirping zombie.

Now they were in Jackson, settled in, he had decided that he’d return her affections. Tonight at the gathering to celebrate their return he would be Prince Charming and treat her like his Queen. When they got home he planned to carry her to their bed and show her just how much he wanted her. In a bed, not with his ass hanging out for everyone to see.

He left their bathroom after a final glance over his uncooperative hair, ran a hand through it with a sigh, and headed out to take his wife to the party. When they got to Maria and Tommy’s house the barbecue pit in the garden had been going for hours. A haunch of venison and two sides of pork, well rubbed and basted, filled the air with delicious smoke. The table in the shade of the trees nearby groaned with salads and baked goods. Maria smiled at them through the crowds from where she stood on the back porch with two frosty pitchers of beer in each of her hands. She gestured with two of them toward Tommy, holding court by the fire.

Shortly after he greeted his brother, Maria joined them, pressing glasses of lager into their hands. Tommy had wrapped his arm about Ellie’s shoulders in a move that made Joel feel possessive and jealous, despite their respective marriages. Joel wasn’t really paying attention to the conversation, trying to maintain his confidence for later. He preferred to focus upon the way her face was animated, filled with good humour and the smiles and laughter that came from her. He was pleased that she seemed to be doing so much better now. She was happier here than she had been on the trails, for which he was grateful. He knew some of the things she had had to do have really upset her; he was glad that the time they were spending was loosening her off.

“What about this guy? He’s your age, single and he likes redheads.”

Joel tuned back in suddenly to the conversation while Tommy pointed at some punk in the crowd. Ellie flushed bright pink and turned away, shaking it. Joel grinned at her discomfort, before wondering why Tommy might even bring this up when the pair of them had given him and Ellie that poetry book.

“Not your type, huh?” Tommy asked, nudging a crimson Ellie’s shoulder. “How about the Parker kid? Sure, he’s a bit older than you, but he’s always got his shirt off and he seems friendly, want me to put in a good word?”

“C’mon Tommy, leave my wife alone.” Joel didn’t hear the gasps or notice the dropped jaws and continued, “I know I ain’t everyone’s perfect match for her, but she said yes. We’re married. Should be enough for everyone else.”

“What? Your what?” Tommy looked like if he was struck by a soft breeze he might fall down.

“Dammit Tommy, you can’t tell me you forgot the weddin’, we got your poetry book right here,” Joel said, fumbling in his pack for the slim volume.

“Joel, honey, you two aren’t married,” Maria started.

Now it was Joel’s turn to gasp in shock. His jaw dropped and he looked from face to face of the other three in the group, trying to hunt out anything like an explanation. Ellie wouldn’t meet his eyes, which surprised him. She was normally totally open to him, even when she hadn’t wanted to be, but he couldn’t get a read on her. His mouth moved slowly up and down a few times, a weak croak the only sound he could make before his voice came back in a ferocious gust.

“What?” His mind was racing. He literally reeled like someone had punched him, and was in that place after a gut punch where you can’t decide whether to pass out or puke. “Maria, what the fuck are you talking about? She’s my fuckin’ wife.”


	12. Chapter Twelve

Joel didn’t see the flinch on Ellie’s features when he used the word, but Tommy did. Realising she knew the truth he tried to draw her aside and calm the argument so they could talk. By contrast, his brother refused to be soothed. Ellie held back for a second but when Joel’s incredulous anger began to pour forth she flinched again at the hurt she could hear in his voice, and followed Tommy to the bench.

“You knew?” he asked, directly. She nodded her eyes on the floor. “And you didn’t tell him?” She shook her head, sadly. “Well, hell, Ellie, you gotta say somethin’ cause I can tell you, when my brother blows himself out he’s gonna want to talk to you.”

Tear-filled green eyes lifted to meet his and Tommy felt bad for pressing her so hard. Slowly she gathered her courage and spilled the story piece by piece.

 “I, I found out after we had already been acting like husband and wife for ages. And it felt so right between the two of us. He was comfort, strength and home all in one. I almost didn’t believe my journal when we got hold of it and I found out.” She trailed off.

“How in the hell did you two wind up thinkin’ you were married in the first place?”

“Well, Tommy, when you wake up wearing a golden wedding band and absolutely nothing else and are pressed to the chest of an equally naked man your brain tends to make that conclusion for you. Plus there was that poetry book with the inscription you damn well wrote.” She looked at him pointedly. “Who wouldn’t think that?”

“I knew he wanted me that first night when he got up to go jerk off quietly. We thought we were there on our honeymoon. When we got to Lethe and found my diary…” She paused, took a deep breath and carried on. “I didn’t want it to be true. We work well together, we make each other happy, shouldn’t that be enough?”

“You don’t think that he’d find that duplicitous?”

“Sure, maybe. I figured I’d let the relationship develop then discover it when we already meant the world to each other. Like in twenty years. When it wouldn’t matter anymore.” She scrubbed a dirty forearm over her face, wiping up the unspent tears and looked straight at her would-be husband’s brother. “Tommy, I love him. What was I supposed to do?”

Tommy’s eyes went wide then slid to her shoulder and went wider.

“Joel!”

Joel’s face was a picture when Ellie turned to see him. The rage he’d obviously burned out yelling at Maria until he realised Ellie was no longer in sight had vanished, leaving behind a deep hurt. His eyes flashed with something she thought was delight at hearing her declaration of love before the wounded look came back and he fixed eyes pooling with water on her.

“You fuckin’ knew? When did you find out? Is that why you tried to fuck me in the trees after that goddamn mall? You think if I came inside you I’d never be able to leave you alone?”

Ellie’s jaw had dropped at his hurt, angry questioning. She looked like a rabbit in the headlights, and he couldn’t leave it alone.

“Was any of it real? Did you even lose your memory or were you just usin’ me this whole fuckin’ time?” His voice was rising in volume, thick cords of muscle on his neck standing out, his head and chest flushing raging red. “You ought to be ashamed, leadin’ me on like that. Were you ever plannin’ on tellin’ me?”

“Joel, dammit, leave the poor girl alone,” Tommy said, trying to intercede.

“You stay the fuck outta this Tommy. I might not be rightly recall everythin’ be I still know I can beat your ass,” Joel snapped, pointing a finger at the centre of his brother’s chest without taking his eyes from Ellie’s.

“You goin’ to say anythin’?” he paused for what felt like an age while a weeping Ellie subjected her boots to a detailed examination.

He turned on his heel with a growl of disgust, shouldered past Maria who had come up behind him, and left.

“Oh, Ellie, sweetheart,” Maria said softly and pulled the visibly distraught girl into her arms. “You want to stay here tonight?”

The sodden patch on her shoulder pressed and released with a nod. When the two of them turned toward the house Tommy had cleared the few remaining guests and was collecting together perishables that couldn’t stay out. He made eye contact with his wife and with the wave of a long married hand conveyed an offer of help. Maria waved him away with a small thankful smile.

Ellie was shown into the guest bedroom, and she took the drink pressed into her hand by Maria to help her settle down. Sniffling and hiccupping she slowly drifted off to a head-achey and restless sleep. Maria checked on her, nervous that the girl she had come to care for had been heartbroken. She covered Ellie with the blankets from the end of the bed and went to hunt down Tommy. It wouldn’t take much persuading to send him over to sort out his brother in the morning.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the significant delay in posting. I think that I might have the end of this sorted out now, so hopefully there should be fewer delays. Depends on whether the two spin-off ideas I have had leave me alone long enough to get this one finished.


	13. Chapter Thirteen

“Tommy, go over and check on him would you?”

“Maria, honey, I ain’t sure it’s right for me, or you, or anyone to be interferin’. Joel has been a stubborn cuss since we were boys and even if he can’t remember that time I swear nothin’ has changed.”

Maria’s fingers worked over his narrow chest, caressing him. Tommy closed his eyes, resisted the urge to purr and decided to hold off as long as she was touching him like this.

“I don’t think we can let Ellie go over there without finding out how he is. She doesn’t know his moods, she can’t tell how to handle him and if it seems like they both want what we have, well. Don’t you want him to get it?”

Tommy grunted, moving his stomach against her hand.

“I don’t know. I mean, Joel, happy? I think that’ll freak out the kids. Turn the milk sour. Make the weeds grow. Maybe cause the end of days. That sort of thing.”

Maria tried to hide a laugh behind an utterly unconvincing yawn.

“Tommy,” she said, only partly mock-exasperated.

“Mmm, promise me you’ll keep doin’ that and I’ll go. In the mornin’.” Tommy purred for real this time and rolled over so he was laid out on his wife. He tried to press his lips against her smile but she pushed him back.

“I’ll carry on where I left off. In the morning. **After** you go sort him out.”

*****

Tommy rolled himself out of bed early the next morning, chased by Maria, sending him to see his brother. He had a faint smile on his face at the feel of his wife’s lips on his, still there when he pushed open the door to the small cabin Ellie and Joel shared. The smile faded when he realised the main room was empty and, unusually, the stove wasn’t lit. He looked quickly in the alcove Ellie usually slept in and was thankful he didn’t find his brother shit-faced and weeping on the floor of the room. He turned back into the main room and ran his eyes over the room more critically. The sink was tidy, like it had been when he brought the pair back after their arrival. Tommy began to feel an anxiety he couldn’t quite grasp. He didn’t want to lift himself onto the ladder into the loft where Joel slept. If he was there he could be sick. Or hurt. Or worse. And if he wasn’t there he didn’t know how he would tell Ellie. The girl had been suffering some kind of separation anxiety since they’d returned.

Tommy steeled himself, stepped onto the bottom rung of the ladder, and lifted himself upward to take a look. The loft was empty and he let out a long breath he hadn’t been aware of holding. His idiot brother wasn’t here. But likely wherever he was in Jackson he was causing someone a migraine. Looking over the rest of the cabin he figured he could go tell Ellie and Maria she could come home and then go in search of his brother, lay down the law and be home in time for some lazy afternoon fun with his wife.

Fifteen minutes later, Tommy was leading Ellie back across the cracked asphalt between their homes. The girl hadn’t spoken to him, had barely made eye contact and her being out of sorts made him all the more determined to sort Joel out. He had never expected Ellie to be anything other than an adopted niece and uncomfortable “replacement” for Sarah but if Joel wanted something different from her and it didn’t break the township rules he didn’t have an issue with it. He felt guilty for how Joel had found out the day before. He realised Ellie had no idea how to broach the subject and felt for her. He didn’t think he would know what to do if he were in her place.

Ellie pushed open the door to their cabin. With a wave of her hand to Tommy stepped inside, beckoning him to follow.

“You’ll be alright here, Ellie?” he asked, kicking himself for not leaving it alone. If she said no and he left her here and Maria found out, he’d be sleeping on the porch again.

“Uh, I guess,” she said, finally turning toward him.

Her eyes went wide when she looked over his shoulder.

“Where’s Joel’s gun belt? Did you see it when you came in before?”

He was puzzled. She’d been spurred back to life by a belt his brother probably slung in a corner somewhere.

“Can’t say as I did.”

Seeing the colour drain from her face he caught her hands in his and pushed her onto the cushion padded bench across from the woodstove.

“Ellie, what’s wrong?”

“It’s not on the door. He always hangs it there. Has done ever since we got back and I don’t know if he remembers, but I think he’s done that ever since we started living here. It’s not there. Neither is he.”

“Of course he’s not here. He’s probably out in Jackson someplace takin’ his bad mood out on someone.”

“No, Tommy. If it isn’t here it’s because he’s left. He uses the holster in the small of his back when he’s in town. He’s taken his fucking guns and fucked off.”

“Now don’t go jumpin’ to conclusions. He can’t have left town that easy.”

“His pack is gone too. And if you’re trying to suggest the guards would have stopped him… Well he knows three different ways out that they wouldn’t see.”

Tommy stared open-mouthed.

“What? Old habits die hard. That’s what he said.”

The momentum of what Ellie had said seemed to hit her, and she convulsed with the effort of holding off sobs. Tommy began to move closer, but she held up a hand.

“Just go, Tommy. I want to be alone right now.”

As he walked away he heard a noise like a wounded animal and almost wavered. He knew Ellie wouldn’t thank him though, and carried on to ask everyone he met if they might know where his brother was.

*****

“Ellie? Darlin’?”

The voice woke her from where she had fallen asleep, exhausted and sore-headed from weeping the night before.

“Joel?”

“Yeah, it’s me.”

“You’re back?”

“Yeah.”

“Where the fuck have you been?” Ellie yelled, her voice and colour rising as she woke further and recalled the situation Joel had left her in.

Joel shifted, sheepishly.

“I, uh, wanted to take a walk. Clear my head.”

“An all-night walk? And you couldn’t have left a fucking note?”

“I know I should have, and I’m sorry. I wasn’t exactly thinkin’ too clearly.”

Ellie cringed, and looked away from the man in front of her. Her anger had drained from her body, leaving only the fear she had felt for him all night, knowing that he had left town without her to watch his back.

“I was so worried. I’m glad you’re back.” She was offering him an olive branch. Joel grabbed for it with both hands, and sat down beside her on the old and worn bench cushion.

“Me too.”

He took a deep breath, and began to off-load.

“Ellie, I have to be honest, sometimes I’m glad I can’t remember who I used to be. There’s a huge gap back there in my past and I’m glad. The stories Tommy has shared with me, of the times we’ve spent together before and after the goddamn apocalypse. None of them have much good in them. An ex-wife who hated me. A job that kept me away from my daughter. And then her dyin’, and the both of us leavin’ a trail of blood an’ gore across America. Somehow he and I got split up, and believe me, don’t think I haven’t noticed how he won’t tell me what happened there. Maybe it’s best I try and start over. Whether that’s here or someplace else.”

He stopped talking when he realised Ellie had gone white and her eyes, always beautiful, had filled with tears and the colours in them took his breath away.

“What’s wrong?”

“Nothing,” she snapped, turning her head away from his reaching hand.

“Don’t give me that. I know you ain’t happy about somethin’. Tell me,” he said his voice softening as he finished his speech.

“You want to start over.”

“I think I can be someone better this time. Someone who can look himself in the eye in the mirror in the mornin’. All it took was losin’ my mind. My memories, anyway.”

“You want to leave?”

“Yeah,” he said, starting to think he and Ellie might be having different conversations. “Could do. Or stay here.”

“Why don’t you come find me when you’ve made up your mind? Or are you gonna just run off in the night again?”

“Hold on,” he said, catching her round the wrist as she rose. “I meant with you. I ain’t goin’ anywhere without you. I ain’t about to up and leave you.”

Joel stood, reaching into his pocket with the hand that wasn’t holding Ellie’s arm. Ellie stood facing him, confused and antsy. She wanted him to finish whatever he came here to say so she could work on putting her life back together. Some of her impatience must have shown on her face.

“I want to be a better man than I have been. Want to use all the things I still know to make my life, our lives, better. But there’s one thing I gotta do first.”

“God, Joel. You never just rip off the band-aid?”

“I’m gettin’ there, I promise. There’s a memory I’m missin’. One I guess I never had in the first place.”

His voice was soft and warm and he lowered himself creakily to one knee.

“Ellie Willliams, you’ve been the most amazin’ wife that I never asked to marry me. All I could think when I found out we weren’t married was how I wished we could be. When I heard you talkin’ to Tommy and got over how mad I was that you’d kept it from me, I realised you wanted the same thing.” He raised the hand that had been digging in his front pocket. Between his thumb and forefinger was a ring, a blue stone surrounded by smaller white ones, glinting in the sun and set in a band of steel coloured metal that gleamed softly in the light.

“Would you do me the honour of bein’ my wife? Again. For real this time.”

“Oh, Joel!” she said, blushing prettily. “What the fuck! You sneaked out of town, without back-up, in the middle of the night, to go off into that monster infested hell-hole, for a fucking ring? What the fuck is wrong with you?”

Joel blanched, cringing internally. He hadn’t anticipated this response. While she railed at him, he realised something else. She was angry because he had worried her. That she had been afraid. Not that he would leave and not return. That he would have been injured. She cared. He found himself smiling, despite the situation.

“How come you’re smiling? This isn’t funny, Joel.”

“Well, darlin’, it ain’t how I imagined you’d respond to me askin’ you to carry on bein’ my wife, but what a story to be tellin’ the grand-babies,” he said, rising from his knees and pulling her into his arms.

“I’m still mad at you,” she said, nestling into his chest.

“I know,” he said, pressing his face into her hair, and nuzzling his wife.

She turned his face to hers and pressed a lust-filled kiss to his lips. He grunted and took her hand. He led her up the ladder into his bed and made up with her. Repeatedly.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the end, as you can see. I'm sorry that it has been so long in coming, there have been some health problems in the family and I had to go away for a while. I don't know if any of you've noticed, but I type all my works on my PC and then upload them (after having also drafted them on paper with a pencil: labourious but there we go) so having to be away from the machine means I can't update. In any case, this is the last chapter. I planned to write another chapter after this with the description of how Joel and Ellie are accepted by their local community, but that felt a little like filler. I also cut it off because I didn't want to keep you waiting any longer for another chapter. In other news, fans of my more "racy" works will be glad to hear that I have a couple that I just need to type up, edit and format.


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